Project details

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Objective

The project, which takes account of the many research projects carried out inside and outside the Community, particularly those of the EPA (United States) and the IFRF (Ijmuiden), is designed to achieve the following objectives.

- to study by experiment and to correlate on this basis the processes of formation and emission of nitrogen oxide by furnaces in steel works, using the most common burners and fuels, with particular reference to coke-oven gas and lean gaseous mixtures (at ambient temperature or preheated);- to build prototypes and establish operational guidelines capable of reducing the level of emission, taking due account of the practical and economic feasibility of the modifications proposed and of the need to avoid impairing the thermal performance of the plants.

Recent research carried out inside the Community has highlighted the significance of nitrogen oxide emission from reheating furnaces in the steel industry.

Given the type of NOx emitted (principally thermal NOx which is produced as a result of the oxidation at high temperatures of nitrogen contained in the combustion air), it seems preferable to reduce concentrations of nitrogen oxide emissions, and so comply with the provisions of the draft Community Directives currently being drawn up on pollution from large combustion plants, by modifying the parameters of the combustion processes and burners, rather than by investing in costly and complex plant for the purification of fumes.

This research project aims to study and apply whatever modifications are feasible to the reheating furnaces used in steel works (pusher furnaces, walking-beam furnaces and continuous and stationary annealing furnaces), which use the gaseous fuels peculiar to integrated production cycles, i.e. coke-oven gas and mixes containing blast furnace gas or converter gas, which have a lower calorific value and which have assumed steadily increasing economic prominence as the cost of the traditional sources of energy has risen.